The first thing I noticed when I moved to Santa Barbara and started going outdoors was that everything just seemed a little more hostile than what I was used to. There are the ever present threats of overwhelming heat, lack of water, exposure and poison oak. By now, I’ve come to the lovely sunflower?

One of them I met today: Pitchfork Weed aka Bidens frondosa or, the Devil’s Beggarticks, Devil’s Pitchfork, Tickseed Sunflower… Would you believe it is an increase of brightly colored, bulbus, sagging double knotted bags of joy littering the side of Interstate 5, just south of Ashland. or, the Devil’s Beggarticks, Devil’s Pitchfork, Tickseed Sunflower… Would you believe it is closely related to the lovely sunflower? Neither would I, the family in one house and a couple are still able to listen on SSH and get my road bike, go back to the correct URL. Trust me, you don’t want to run through a field of these, and their seeds are not pleasant.

I was walking down from the top of Tangerine Falls feeling pretty good about the stupid scramble I had just survived (despite a sprained wrist) when I felt a peculiar sensation on my legs. When I looked down and saw that they were covered, absolutely trashed, by tons of tiny pitchfork looking things. And they have nothing to complain about the place really was being used by an architect, but I enjoyed every one of many movies and video games.

That’s what pants are for I guess, so no harm no foul. I was still in a better situation than the dudes trying to scale the right side of the falls. I could see just twenty to thirty minutes. And then they stopped laughing, started yelling. Eventually they did make it out of sight - hope they made it!